I recently purchased a used Craftsman Router Crafter on eBay and would like to explore its capabilities further. I was impressed by the beautiful pieces produced by GDPIFER, and noticed that there are others also interested in using this machine. In my initial endeavor, I did produce a hollow spiral piece, but the “wavelength” of the spiral appears to be too big to make little candlestick holders for a dinner table. The “wavelength” of the spirals on the pieces produced by GDPIFER appears to be much shorter than I produced on my machine. Is there a way to change this “wavelength”? My machine does not have any changeable gears or other obvious ways that I might change the relationship between the amount of rotation of the work-piece versus the longitudinal travel distance of the router. What am I not seeing or missing? Any comments or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

3 replies so far

You are not missing anything. Those ratios are fixed and can not be adjusted. The tool is nice but because of its size and built it is suited for 2×2 stick to make spindles out of. I have to spend a lot of time (hours) sanding after the cutting is done on mine. It is a pain to operate but the “competition” will cost you 3 grand.

Mahdee:Thank you for your quick post. However, why does it seem to me that spirals produced on other (similar) machines appear to be much “tighter”? I admit that my initial and only piece so far has started out as two pieces of pine 2X4 glued together and then sawn to approximately 3×3. I did produce a hollow spiral which was far from perfect, but it provided me sufficient information to re-think the projects that can be done on this machine. However, I am still trying to find a relatively work-efficient way to produce small hollow spiral candlestick holders.

Very welcome woodczuk,The only ratio you can change on that is the proximity of cuts in relation to one another using the dial numbers 1-24. In order to change the spiral tightness, you have to be able to reduce the router travel in contrast to the rotation of the handle. That would require the plastic part that holds the steel cable to be smaller in diameter. I have not had the courage to take that thing apart to see what is underneath but I doubt it can be modified unless it could be replaced with various cylindrical sized attachments that could be easily installed.